Saturday, April 30, 2016

Whitney Museum
of American Art June 10 through
September 25, 2016

National Gallery of Art from November 20,
2016 through March 5, 2017

De Young
Museum in San Francisco from April 8 through August 6, 2017

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, from
September 16, 2017 through January 8, 2018.

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing features 100 artworks by an
artist whose formal brilliance and complexity captured the energy of
mass culture and modern life. The exhibition is unusual in its focus on
Davis’s mature work, from his paintings of consumer products of the
early 1920s to the work left on his easel at his death in 1964, and in
exploring Davis’s habit of using preexisting motifs as springboards for
new compositions. The exhibition departs in significant ways from
earlier presentations of the artist’s work. The exhibition omits Davis’s
decade of apprenticeship to European modernism (following his
introduction to it at the 1913 Armory Show) in favor of the series of
breakthroughs he made beginning in 1921 with his paintings of tobacco
packages and household products, and continuing into his last two
decades in which he employed abstract shapes, brilliant color, and words
to evoke the ebullience of popular culture.“Stuart Davis has
been called one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and
the best American artist of his generation, his art hailed as a
precursor of the rival styles of pop and geometric color abstraction,”
remarks Barbara Haskell. “Faced with the choice early in his career
between realism and pure abstraction, he invented a vocabulary that
harnessed the grammar of abstraction to the speed and simultaneity of
modern America. By merging the bold, hard-edged style of advertising
with the conventions of avant-garde painting, he created an art endowed
with the vitality and dynamic rhythms that he saw as uniquely modern and
American. In the process, Davis achieved a rare synthesis: an art that
is resolutely abstract yet at the same time exudes the spirit of popular
culture.”

Co-organized by the Whitney Museum
of American Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,

In
these three volumes, the editors have catalogued 1,749 artworks by
Stuart Davis, including more than 600 works never previously
illustrated, providing extensive documentation and information about
each one.

This refinedinteriorstandsasalastingachievement of painting in the Golden Age of
the mid-17th century, when Metsuandhispeers–includingJohannesVermeer,GerritDouandFransvanMieris–werecreatingvividscenes of everyday life. The work is further
distinguished by the many historical labels on its reverse, which tell its fascinating
journey through one of the most momentousperiods in recent history.

The picture enteredtheViennese
Rothschildfamily’slegendary collectionby1866,anddescended in the family for decades. The
contents of the family’s palace in Vienna were targeted and seized by Nazi
authorities in 1938, and the collection – including the Metsu – was removed to
the central depot of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The RothschildMetsu
wasoneofthemasterpiecesselectedforthegrandiosemuseumthatHitler plannedtoconstructinLinz.When thistreasuretrovewas indanger of Alliedbombing,theMetsuand some 6,500otherpaintings–including JanvanEyck’s GhentAltarpiece–were movedforsafekeepingtothesaltminesinAltausee.

The AlliedForces’celebratedMonumentsMenlater recovered these works,
thwarting a plan by the Nazi district leader to destroy the mines in response to
Hitler’sNeroDecree.Afterhavingbeeninventoried,photographedandidentifiedbytheMonumentsMenasthepropertyoftheRothschildfamily,the presentpicturewasreturnedtoVienna
in November 1945. Atthistime,theBaronessvonRothschildwasdeterminedtorecoverhercollectionsandexportthemtohernewhomeintheUnitedStates.Shewasgrantedexportlicensesforthebulkofthe
works, butonlyonthe
condition that she donateanumberofhermostimportantpieces totheAustrianstate.In1948,some250highlightsfromthefamily collectionenteredtheinventories of Viennesemuseums,withTheRothschildMetsureturningtothe
KunsthistorischesMuseum–the very
museum where it had previously been held after its original seizure from the
family palace.

UndertherestitutionlawsintroducedinAustriain1998,theRothschildfamilywasabletoreclaimthepaintingstheyhadunwillinglydonatedin1948.AndsoitwasthatThe RothschildMetsuwas returned to the family,
and sold at auction in 1999 to the present owner.

Christopher Apostle, Head of
Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department in New York, said:“Gabriel Metsu ranks
as one of the most important painters of his day, and An Officer Paying Court
to a Young Womanis bothabeautifulandquintessential exampleofhisbest work.ThepaintingrepresentsanearperfectdistillationoftheclassGoldenAgegenrescene,containingmanyofthehallmarksofthis category: two elegant people dressed in
rich fabrics, a dog – representing fidelity, or in this case a lack thereof –
jugs and wine glasses, all set in a typical Dutch interior space. No finer work
by the artisthaseverbeenofferedatauction,making ourMaysalearareopportunityforcollectorsto acquire such a
masterpiece.”

Painted circa 1658-60, An Officer Paying Court to a Young Woman is
a testament to the time in which timeMetsuwasatthepeakofhisartisticpowersandcommercialpopularity.Havingbegunhiscareerattheageof14inhisnativeLeiden,hesoonestablishedhimselfasamasterinhisfieldandbecame a founding member of
the painter’s guild in 1648. His early technique was influenced greatly byGerritDou,whosetransformationalstyleusheredinatasteforsmallscale,minutely-detailed pictures
featuring an excess of genre subjects.

OnceMetsumovedtoAmsterdamin1654,hefoundhimselfgravitatingtowardsportrayingelegantly-dressedupperclasssubjects,shiftingawayfromlarge-scalehistorical,allegoricalandreligioussubjects–atthetimedominatedbyRembrandtandhisfollowers.InAmsterdam,Metsudiscoveredarapidlyexpandingmarketforthisunderrepresentedcollectingcategory,andwasableto
carve out his niche as the preeminent genre painter.

AnOfficerPayingCourttoaYoungWoman isaquintessentialexampleoftheartist’suniquestyle,drawn from the very best elements of Dutch
genre painting. Set in a quiet moment inside of a tavern, the painting depicts
a silent exchange between an elegantly dressed man and woman. Of particular beauty
are the figure’s luxurious costumes, which mirror Metsu’s meticulous
application of paint to mimic the play of light.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

J.M.W. Turner's Quartet of Whaling Paintings United for First Time in New Exhibition

Turner's Whaling Pictures, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 10, will be the first exhibition to unite the series of four whaling scenes painted by the great British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) near the end of his career. The quartet of paintings—comprising

The Met's Whalers (ca. 1845) and its three companions from Tate Britain—were among the last seascapes exhibited by Turner, for whom marine subjects were a creative mainstay. The topic of whaling resonated with some of Turner's favorite themes: modern maritime labor, Britain's global naval empire, human ambition and frailty, and the awe-inspiring power of nature termed the Sublime.

Shown in pairs at the Royal Academy in London in 1845 and 1846, the whaling canvases confounded critics with their "tumultuous surges" of brushwork and color, which threatened to obscure the motif; yet the pictures earned admiration for the brilliance and vitality of their overall effects.

From the Tate: This is the first of two whaling subjects Turner exhibited at the
Royal Academy in 1845 (followed by two more in 1846), probably painted
in the hope of selling them to his patron Elhanan Bicknell, an investor
in the whaling industry.

The four pictures were inspired by Thomas Beale’s Natural History of the Sperm Whale
(1839), with this painting based on an account of the pursuit of a
whale in the North Pacific. At the right the creature has been harpooned
and is bleeding, while men in three boats stand with their arms raised
to strike again.

From the Tate: The last of Turner’s whaling paintings shows the boiling of blubber
for processing into oil. The creature laid out on the ice at the right
of the picture may have been based on a whale caught in the Thames in
1842, as well as on images by other artists.

As the title makes clear, the success of the whalers is threatened
by the frozen water. A reference to this incident is made in the
companion to this painting which shows the Erebus, a boat the Admiralty had promised, but failed, to send to rescue ships trapped in the ice.

Turner's Whaling Pictures will offer a unique opportunity to consider the paintings as an ensemble and to contemplate their legacy, including their possible impact on Herman Melville's epic novel Moby–Dick, published months before Turner's death in 1851. It is not certain that Melville saw the paintings when he first visited London in 1849, but he was unquestionably aware of them. Aspects of Melville's novel are strikingly evocative of Turner's style.

In addition to the four paintings that will be on view, a selection of related watercolors, prints, books, and wall quotes will also be displayed and will offer insight into Turner's paintings and their possible relationship with Melville's text.

A whaling harpoon, on loan from the South Street Seaport Museum, and whale oil lamps from The Met's collection will also be on view. This focus exhibition will allow viewers to engage closely with the output of these two great 19th–century artists, and to assess for themselves whether the British painter inspired one of the crowning achievements of American literature.

Turner's Whaling Pictures is organized by Alison Hokanson, Assistant Curator, and Katharine Baetjer, Curator, both of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Paintings.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

This
spring, the Musée Jacquemart-André is presenting an ensemble of some fifty or
so prestigious artworks—from both private collections and major American and
European museums—that retrace the history of Impressionism, from the
forefathers of the movement to the Great Masters.

The 19th century saw the
emergence of a new pictorial genre: ‘plein-air’ or outdoor landscape painting.
This pictorial revolution, born in England, would spread to the continent in
the 1820s and over the course of a century, Normandy would become the preferred
destination of many avant-garde painters. The region’s stunning and diverse
landscapes, coupled with the wealth of its architectural heritage, had much to
please artists.

Furthermore, the growing fashion for sea-bathing attracted many
wealthy individuals and families who could easily access Normandy by either
boat or stage-coach, and later by train. Its popularity was also increased due
to its enviable location—halfway between London and Paris, the two art capitals
of the period.

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, British landscape
artists such as Turner, Bonington, and Cotman travelled to Normandy, with their
boxes of watercolours, while the French—Géricault, Delacroix, Isabey—made their
way to London to discover the English school.

From these exchanges, a French
landscape school was born, with Corot and Huet at the helm. In their wake,
another generation of painters would in turn explore the region (Delacroix,
Riesener, Daubigny, Millet, Jongkind, Isabey, Troyon), inventing a new
aesthetic. This artistic revolution truly began to take form at the beginning
of the 1860s, the fruit of lively discussions and exchanges at the Saint-Siméon
Farm in Honfleur on Normandy’s Flower Coast, increasingly popular with the
crème de la crème of this new school of painting. These included Boudin, Monet
and Jongkind—an inseparable trio—but also their friends: Courbet, Daubigny,
Bazille, Whistler, and Cals...And of course, Baudelaire, who was the first to
celebrate in 1859, the ‘meteorological beauties’ of Boudin’s paintings.

Not far
away, in the hedgerows and woodlands of the Normandy countryside, Degas painted
his first horse races at Haras-du-Pin and Berthe Morisot took up landscape
painting, while at Cherbourg, Manet would revolutionize seascapes. For several
decades, Normandy would be the preferred outdoor or ‘plein-air’ studio of the
Impressionists. Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Boudin, Morisot, Caillebotte,
Gonzales, and Gauguin would all experiment with their art here in a constant
quest for originality and innovation.

The aim of this exhibition is to evoke the
decisive role played by Normandy in the emergence of the Impressionist
movement, through exchanges between French and British landscape painters, the
development of a school of nature and the encounters between artists at
Saint-Siméon. From a historical to a geographic approach, the exhibition then
shows how the Normandy landscape, especially the quality of its light, were
critical in the attraction that the region had on the Great Impressionist
Masters

For
a long time, the history of Impressionism has been understood as having a
relatively short chronology, beginning in 1863 with the Salon des Refusés and
ending in 1886 with the 8thExposition Impressioniste. This approach assigned a
crucial role to Paris and the Île-de-France region but very little to other
areas of France and to foreign influences.

Research carried out over the past
thirty or so years has led us to reconsider the history of the movement and to
situate it within a longer time frame which puts the origins or roots of
Impressionism at the beginning of the 1820s. This new approach also underlines
the influence of the English School in the birth of a French Landscape School
and assigns Normandy a decisive role in the emergence of the Impressionist
movement.

Several factors may explain why Normandy was the birthplace of
Impressionism

• its geographical location, half-way between London and Paris,
the two artistic epicentres of the time

•
the region’s rich architectural heritage at a time when artists played an
active role in its preservation and promotion

(Corot, Jumièges, Smith College
Museum of Art, Northampton) ;

in 1820 Isidore Taylor published his Voyages
pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France, with the first two volumes
devoted to Normandy. In 1825, Victor Hugo published an essay on the
preservation of French patrimonial monuments entitled Guerre aux démolisseurs.

•
the fashion for sea-bathing, imported from England, which became popular in
Dieppe circa 1820, before spreading along the Channel coastline.

• the beauty
and diversity of the region’s landscapes, as well as the subtlety and
versatility of the light, in an era when landscape painting became a genre in
its own right and when painters began to leave their studios to paint nature as
they saw it, outdoors and in natural light.

On the one hand, there existed a working class that
was increasingly sidelined, and on the other hand, an aristocracy and upper
middle class who came to the Normandy coast to take advantage of the fresh air
and sea-bathing, with a social life akin to the capital’s. Hence the creation
of promenades (the famous wooden boardwalks in Trouville and Deauville); race
tracks

(Degas, Course de gentlemen. Avant le départ, Musée d’Orsay, Paris);

bandstands where concerts were held; casinos for betting, and attending
operettas or plays. Soon tennis clubs based on the English model would open up
all along the coast. All of these venues were places of conviviality and a
means of social segregation.

Under
the Second Empire (1852 – 1870), a period of industrialization during which
many families amassed large fortunes, the concept of summer holidays became
hugely popular. New seaside resorts sprung up all along the Flower Coast (Côte
Fleurie) between Deauville and Cabourg. The emergence of a ‘lifestyle of
leisure’ chronicled by the painters of the time was a godsend to many artists
who had previously struggled to sell their ‘seascapes’ and who could now
command high prices for their ‘beach scenes’. This genre, invented by Eugène
Boudin in 1862 would be imitated by all of his Impressionist friends

The
coastline of the English Channel, with its tumultuous tides and impressive
storms, had long inspired a romantic vision of the sea, as skilfully depicted
in the work of both Eugène Isabey and William Turner. However as seaside
resorts grew, painters devoted themselves to a new vision of their marine
environment. They became less interested in the sea itself and more in its
natural and human environment

With its ports teeming with boats, stretching
from Tréport to the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, and its sheer cliffs, where the
whiteness of the chalk contrasted with the verdant grass covering, the Channel
coastline offered an infinite variety of subjects and motifs to be painted

Dieppe, which was the
first seaside resort to be created in the 1820s, attracted many of the leading
figures of this new style of painting (Monet, Renoir, Degas, Boudin, Pissarro
and Gauguin) following the War of 1870, as well as artists Blanche, Gervex and
Helleu, referred to as ‘society painters’ (one should of course pay little heed
to such artificial classifications). It also attracted other unclassifiable
artists like Eva Gonzalès, Manet’s only student and last but not least, a large
number of Anglo-Saxon artists

room
4

From
ports to cliffs – Dieppe

For
artists in search of subject matter to paint, Normandy’s Alabaster Coast
provided plenty of examples of stunning natural architecture: immense
panoramas, a rugged coastline of estuaries and valleys, and huge white chalk
cliffs, eroded by the sea and the wind. Maupassant would compare the natural
cliff arches of Manneport d’Étretat to an ‘enormous cave through which a ship
with all its sails unfurled could pass’ and the Porte d’Amont to ‘the huge
figure of an elephant’s trunk plunged into the waves’.But above all what
Courbet, Monet, Renoir and Berthe Morisot sought in this section of the coast
were the incredible chromatic variations of the sea and the sky, connected to
the ebb and flow of the tides, the passing wind and the clouds, and the sea
spray. These continuous atmospheric changes were for them a powerful stimulus
to work quickly, without getting too bogged down in detail, so as to be able to
render the smallest nuances in the light

The central place given to the treatment of the light would
bring Courbet, in 1869, to experiment with the process of making series of
paintings, depicting for example the cliffs at Étretat in different light

(Courbet, La Falaise d’Étretat, Van der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal).

In the 1880s
and 1890s, Monet would also use this process, painting numerous depictions of
cliffs, from those at Petites-Dalles in Fécamp to ones at Étretat,
Varengeville, Porville and Dieppe

Towards
the middle of the century a new means of transport appeared: the train, which
would completely revolutionize travel. Railway lines between Paris and the
Normandy coast were amongst the first to be created. The Paris-Rouen line was
opened in 1843, extended to Le Havre in 1847, to Dieppe the following year, and
in 1856 to Fécamp. In the 1860s, trains stopped at Deauville-Trouville and all
the other seaside resorts along the Flower Coast. In their advertising
campaigns, railroad companies highlighted the fact that travellers could reach
the coast in two to three hours. There were even special trains running for
certain events, such as the naval battles of the American Civil War fought off
the coast of Cherbourg, attended by Manet in 1864.The train was not only used
by Parisian artists (Morisot, Degas, Manet, Caillebotte, etc.) seeking to leave
the capital and to soak up the fresh sea air at the coast in their quest for
new subject matter to paint. It was also used by painters from Normandy
(Boudin, Monet, Dubourg, Lépine, Lebourg, etc.) who travelled to Paris to
exhibit their work at the Salon, visiting exhibitions, meeting with fellow
artists, as well as art dealers and collectors during their stay.

Like
the Alabaster Coast, the ports and coastline stretching from Le Havre to
Cherbourg would equally captivate Boudin, Monet and Pissarro, as well as Berthe
Morisot, Degas, Signac, Seurat and many other landscape artists. Amongst them,
was a practically unknown painter: Charles Pécrus, converted by his friend
Boudin to the art of landscape painting and whose very lively port scenes would
owe a lot to Boudin’s influence (Pécrus, Le Port de Honfleur, Association
Peindre en Normandie, Caen).Towards the end of his life, Boudin would adopt an
even brighter palette and an even bolder and freer brushstroke. Pursuing his
passionate quest for light, he would focus on the shimmering reflections of the
water, the vibrations of the air, and the clouds as they raced across an
enormous sky (Entrée du port du Havre par grand vent, Collection particulière,
Courtesy Galerie de la Présidence, Paris).

This sensitive, delicate art is
completely removed from the vigorous representations—heralding the
Expressionist and Fauvist movements—which Monet, at the beginning of his
career, would produce of fishing boats moored in the port of Honfleur (Barques
de pêche, collection particulière, et Bateaux de pêche, Muzeul National de Arta
al României, Bucarest).

To capture the comings and goings of the boats and the
strollers, Pissarro and Berthe Morisot preferred to make use of slightly
plunging perspectives, from an elevated viewing point. Berthe was especially
interested in the effects of perspective, which she skilfully mastered
(L’Entrée du port de Cherbourg, Yale University Art Gallery), while Pissarro
attempted to capture the passage of time and atmospheric variations, delivering
a superb series of port views of Le Havre which form part of his artistic
legacy (L’Anse des Pilotes et le briselames est, Le Havre, après-midi, temps
ensoleillé, Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre).

room
7

From
ports to cliffs - From Le Havre to Cherbourg

If
throughout the course of the 19thcentury, Rouen attracted so many landscape
painters from Turner, Boninton and Corot to Monet and Pissarro, it was because
of the town’s remarkable architectural heritage. Rouen was celebrated by Victor
Hugo as the ‘city of a hundred bell towers’ and was immortalized by Monet (La
Rue de l’Épicerie à Rouen, Collection particulière, courtesy of the Fondation
Pierre Gianadda, Martigny). The destination was made even more attractive due
to its topography, which Flaubert compared to an amphitheatre. Nestled between
the river and the surrounding hills, the town not only offered ‘the most
splendid landscape that a painter could ever dream of’ (Pissarro) but above all,
the effects of fog and rain and the constant atmospheric variations proved to
be a source of great pleasure to all those in search of the ephemeral. The
liveliness of the port and its industrial landscape, where the tall factory
chimneys on the left bank echoed the bell towers on the right bank, would draw
Pissarro to make this enthusiastic comparison: ‘It’s as beautiful as Venice’
(Le Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, effet de pluie, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe,
room 7). Many of the Impressionist masters (Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Gauguin)
would stay in Rouen. This, coupled with the presence of several important
collectors (François Depeaux, Léon Monet, Eugène Murer) would favour the birth
of a Rouen School to cite the expression of art critic, Arsène Alexandre. Monet
in Giverny Claude Monet lived for 43 years in his house in Giverny from 1883 to
1926. Passionate about gardening, he designed his gardens as veritable
paintings. In 1893, he put in a pond which he had covered with lily pads and
created a Japanese-style garden ‘for the pleasure of the eye but also with the
intention of providing subject matter for painting’. Until his death, his
garden proved to be his most fertile source of inspiration. Indeed, he once
said : ‘My most beautiful masterpiece is my garden’.

Monet began painting
waterlilies in 1895 and his Japanese bridge would be the object of some fifty
canvases. Taking out the horizon and the sky, he narrowed his focus on the
bridge, the water and the reflections. From 1918 onwards, the pictorial elements
or details would give way to an explosion of colours, with the density of the
brushstrokes bordering on abstraction. The water and the sky seem to merge and
under these fireworks of colour, the bridge appears little by little, providing
a landmark or a point of reference to the composition.

As Daniel Wildenstein,
author of the catalogue raisonné of the artist, would say, the exceptional
series of the Pont japonaisrepresents the culmination of Monet’s oeuvre where
the vibration of the colour is enough to evoke a world of sensation and
powerful emotion

Room
8

Along
the Seine, from Rouen to Giverny

If
throughout the course of the 19th century, Rouen attracted so many
landscape painters from Turner, Boninton and Corot to Monet and Pissarro, it
was because of the town’s remarkable architectural heritage. Rouen was
celebrated by Victor Hugo as the ‘city of a hundred bell towers’ and was
immortalized by Monet (La Rue de l’Épicerie à Rouen, Collection particulière,
courtesy of the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny). The destination was made
even more attractive due to its topography, which Flaubert compared to an
amphitheatre. Nestled between the river and the surrounding hills, the town not
only offered ‘the most splendid landscape that a painter could ever dream of’
(Pissarro) but above all, the effects of fog and rain and the constant
atmospheric variations proved to be a source of great pleasure to all those in
search of the ephemeral. The liveliness of the port and its industrial
landscape, where the tall factory chimneys on the left bank echoed the bell
towers on the right bank, would draw Pissarro to make this enthusiastic
comparison: ‘It’s as beautiful as Venice’ (Le Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, effet de
pluie, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, room 7). Many of the Impressionist
masters (Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Gauguin) would stay in Rouen. This, coupled with
the presence of several important collectors (François Depeaux, Léon Monet,
Eugène Murer) would favour the birth of a Rouen School to cite the expression
of art critic, Arsène Alexandre.

Monet in Giverny

Claude Monet lived for 43
years in his house in Giverny from 1883 to 1926. Passionate about gardening, he
designed his gardens as veritable paintings. In 1893, he put in a pond that he
had covered with lily pads and created a Japanese-style garden ‘for the
pleasure of the eye but also with the intention of providing subject matter for
painting’. Until his death, his garden proved to be his most fertile source of
inspiration. Indeed, he once said: ‘My most beautiful masterpiece is my
garden’. Monet began painting waterlilies in 1895 and his Japanese bridge would
be the object of some fifty canvases. Taking out the horizon and the sky, he
narrowed his focus on the bridge, the water and the reflections. From 1918
onwards, the pictorial elements or details would give way to an explosion of
colours, with the density of the brushstrokes bordering on abstraction. The
water and the sky seem to merge and under these fireworks of colour, the bridge
appears little by little, providing a landmark or a point of reference to the
composition.

As
Daniel Wildenstein, author of the catalogue raisonné of the artist, would say,
the exceptional series of the Pont japonais represents the culmination of
Monet’s oeuvre where the vibration of the colour is enough to evoke a world of
sensation and powerful emotion(Pont
japonais, Collection Larock-Granoff, Paris).